the front

September 24 movie: The Front. Why was I surprised that a 1970s black comedy about the 1950s Hollywood blacklist, made by and starring victims of the blacklist, would be bitter and depressing? It was a good movie, though, like I said, bitter and depressing. Woody Allen plays a small-time bookie who agrees to serve as a front for a friend who has been blacklisted from his job as a TV writer. The friend writes the scripts, Allen signs his name, attends meetings with the network, and takes 10%. Everything goes great until, inevitably, everything goes all pear-shaped. Zero Mostel (real life blacklist victim) also stars as a TV actor who is blacklisted. At the end Robert Osborne said it was Mostel's last movie. He also said Mostel had a reputation for being difficult to work with, but he was serious and professional on this film. I guess due to the resonance with his own past: he had had a close friend who suffered the same fate in real life as Mostel's character in the movie.